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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Fifteen Novels in Fifteen Minutes

I was tagged for this on Facebook (which I actually remembered to visit today), but it is too good to just leave there. Influenced is harder than "liked" ... but here we go ...

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. List, in no particular order) fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

Rumer Godden

Agatha Christie (nonfiction)

Harriett Beecher Stowe

Robert Alter (his OT translations)

Flannery O'Conner (The Habit of Being)

Dean Koontz

CS Lewis

Shirley Jackson

Samuel Shellabarger

Fulton Sheen

Francis Fernandez (author of the In Conversation with God series)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Robert R. Chase

Charlotte Bronte

M.F.K. Fisher

You're supposed to tag fifteen people but I decline that part. Not that I wouldn't like to see what Jeff Miller, Stephen Riddle, Will Duquette, and Maureen (Aliens in this World) would pick. I'm just sayin' ...

Will Duquette's list is here. I can't believe I forgot Peter Kreeft! He was much more influential than Fulton Sheen, who was very influential indeed.

newguy, you've got more than one person on that list that I have never heard of and must investigate. I have had a large does of Josemaria Escriva thanks to the Daily Conversation books on my list ... and have found him very helpful and influential via that source.

Wow, these are fantastic lists ... and there are so many who I'd have put on my list if I'd have thought of them. Houselander, Augustine, Bloom, and Adler being prime among them.

I have always meant to find Sayers' translation of Dante, although I absolutely love Ciardi's translation. It was especially enjoyable over Thanksgiving to find that Rose is grooving on Ciardi's translation and commentary for Inferno for an English class ... so much so that she is planning on reading Purgatorio and (?) Heaven later on her own time.

Thanks Bob! I am still trying hard to adhere to my "book fast" resolution for 2010 ... but your kind and fast response made me go to the library website and see that they actually have her translation of Purgatorio (and I'm still laughing at myself that I didn't remember Heaven is Paradise!).

Some Like It Hot

Sugar:

Real diamonds! They must be worth their weight in gold!

Horoscope

You will slowly come to appreciate the value of silence when everyone seems to want to say things you do not wish to hear.

Note this is satire via The Onion (warning: site can contain explicit content). Satire means: trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

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